Fast Fashion Lenting – More Mindfulness and Minimalism in your closet

Today on the 1st of March many of us set stop using sugar, drinking alcohol or begin to integrate a short exercise session into their daily life for a period of 40 days. Welcome to Lent! I have do admit that fasting has never been part of my life because I was of the opinion that you only can change if habit if you integrate it into your life in the long-run. Why do I now write a blog post about fast fashion fasting?

Moving away from fast fashion towards fair fashion begins with you!

Lovely Corinna has inspired my with her latest blog post on her blog “Kissen und Karma” to stop buying fast fashion for 40 days. Reading her blog post I immediately got hooked by her idea. She suggest not to purchase any fast fashion clothing for a period of 40 days. I totally agree with Corinna that this challenge for sure will not change the world, but it will change you. It will change your perspective on the fast fashion industry and also on consumerism. That’s why I really support Corinnas’s initiative and together we want to reach more people that take part in this challenge.

Mindfulness and minimalism as fast fashion lenting-principles

So, know you got an idea what this challenge involves it is important to somehow find a starting point. When thinking of fast fashion fasting I am convinced that your own mindset plays a crucial role, too. It is important to set yourself principles and/or goals which guid you through the pasting period. As you perhaps might have read in my blogpost, I understand sustainability as holistic philosophy of life. Sustainability starts with you and then you take care oft he environment. That’s why I recommend you to see fast fashion fasting not only as benefit fort he fair fashion industry and the whole textile industry in general, but also as benefit for yourself. I looked for two fast fashion principles that can help you to start the challenge and make you feel better:

Principle 1: Minimalism – Declutter your closet

As a first step I recommend you to look through your closet and assort all your clothes. This process gives you an overview over all the clothing you possess and you will for sure find some items that you have been searching for a while. This can be a lot of fun though! What I usually do is the following: I go through my closet and compose different outfits in my head. Using this technique I sort out clothes that I will definitely never wear again and keep the ones that can be matched with other clothing items. You will see that this outfit creation is a lot of fun.

After decluttering your wardrobe there will be moments during your fast fashion fasting in which you will be tempted to buy new fast fashion items. For this purpose I recommend you a technique stemming from mindfulness training. If there is a moment in which you desperately want to buy a fast fashion clothing item, take a deep breath through your nose and breath out through your mouth. You will see that only one breath will anchor you in the now and bring back all your attention to this very moment. You will receive much more clarity. Then again, think of if you really need the new fast fashion clothing item. Make yourself aware of the amount of clothing you already own and that you actually do not need more stuff. Instead, wear all the nice items from your closet and combine them with new pieces.

I really hope that these two principles can guide you through the fast fashion lenting period. If you want you are more than welcome to leave a comment if you have done such a challenge already or what you think of this concept. I am open for any new ideas. And feel free to share this post: we want to reach as many people as possible!